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		<title>I might be headed to New York? &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2017/01-January/16.xhtml&gt;</title>
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		<header>
			<h1>I might be headed to New York?</h1>
			<p>Day 00681: <time>Monday, 2017 January 16</time></p>
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<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2017/01/16.jpg" alt="Ice, strangely shaped like a slug" class="framed-centred-image" width="809" height="480"/>
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		I hand-washed more laundry, this time, a small load of socks.
	</p>
	<p>
		The Google &quot;security&quot; team are either a bunch of highly-incompetent morons or they&apos;re crafty bastards that are just incompetent enough to not understand basic corner cases.
		They locked me out of my account yesterday and claimed that I needed to verify my identity using a telephone number.
		Assuming that they had my telephone number, you could claim that this is two-factor authentication.
		The second factor is highly insecure because the telephone system is highly insecure, but it could be argued that at least it doesn&apos;t <strong>*lessen*</strong> security.
		However, Google doesn&apos;t have my telephone number.
		Instead, they insisted that I use <strong>*any*</strong> telephone number for verification.
		This doesn&apos;t <strong>*at all*</strong> verify my identity, it only verifies that I have access to a telephone.
		If the Google &quot;security&quot; team is actually under the impression that this provides <strong>*any*</strong> security at all, they&apos;re highly-incompetent morons.
		However, I actually think that they&apos;re less-incompetent crafty bastards.
		Under the guise of &quot;security&quot;, they&apos;re demanding personal information, which they can then sell to advertisers.
		Geniuses, no?
		However, they&apos;re failing to account for a <strong>*very*</strong> basic corner case.
		What if I&apos;m determined not to give companies such as Google my telephone number?
		What if I also have any intelligence whatsoever?
		In this case, I can use a telephone that <strong>*has nothing to do with me*</strong> or I can get help from someone across the Internet.
		In this case, I went to a local mobile shop.
		Thankfully, the only customer service representative in the place was talking with a customer.
		I simply went over to a device, asked the device for its telephone number, and entered that into my own mobile, which is behind <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr>.
		I waited for the <abbr title="Short Message Service">SMS</abbr> message, then entered their verification code into my mobile as well.
		What did Google even gain from wasting an hour of my time (the walk was about an hour, round trip)?
		I guess that they can see what city that I&apos;m in, but even that&apos;s just a guess.
		Google doesn&apos;t know that I&apos;m a pedestrian and had to choose a telephone within walking distance.
		If I had a motor vehicle, I could have gone a few cities over!
		Besides, I already <strong>*told*</strong> Google what city I&apos;m in so that I could get the correct area code for the Google Voice telephone number.
		In other words, Google learned nothing about me from this ordeal, and now has a telephone number associated with me that I&apos;ll probably never have anything to do with again.
		Good job, Google.
		Thanks for wasting my time.
		I need this Google Voice for at least a few days longer, too.
		Though I told the property managers that email will reach me sooner than telephone calls and they said that the telephone number was only needed for emergencies, they might try to contact me via that telephone number to tell me when the property is ready to look at.
	</p>
	<p>
		My mother and I went out today, and we found a strange, slug-shaped blob of ice.
		The photograph above doesn&apos;t do this thing justice.
		We both thought that it really was a slug at first.
		My mother came to the conclusion that it was only ice because they don&apos;t think that clear slugs exist, while I came to the same conclusion because I think that if there <strong>*are*</strong> clear slugs, their organs would be visible, while there were no organs in this ice.
		I gently poked it with a stick to verify its hardness, then touched it with my hand to verify its coldness.
		Sure enough, it&apos;s only ice.
		Strange.
		Aside from the icicles coming off of the tail, it&apos;s the exact shape of a slug, including the texture of the head and the smoothness of the tail.
	</p>
	<p>
		I found a bike lock on my way to my mother&apos;s house from work.
		It&apos;s like the bike lock that I had in Coos Bay: you spell out a four-letter word to unlock it.
		We ended up leaving that lock as well as my bicycle to make room for other things in the moving van.
		In any case, I was going to try out every combination when I had time, but taking a chance, I tried the combination that the lock was already set to.
		Sure enough, that was it! The combination is &quot;LIES&quot;.
		My mother brought up a good point though: I can&apos;t actually use this lock in town.
		I don&apos;t have a way to track down the original owner for sure, but if the owner doesn&apos;t live where I think that they do, they still might recognize the lock if they see it.
		At that point, they could steal my bike.
		I&apos;ll try to return it tomorrow (I was going to do that anyway), but if that doesn&apos;t work, this thing isn&apos;t usable.
	</p>
	<p>
		Also on my way home, I was thinking about how I&apos;ll be able to eat better when I move out.
		That&apos;s when it occurred to me: I will need to use the refrigerator after all.
		If I&apos;m going to eat decently, I&apos;m going to need to be able to keep fresh vegetables around.
	</p>
	<p>
		My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="university">
	<h2>University life</h2>
	<p>
		University of <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span> wrote back today.
		It seems that Flash won&apos;t be needed for the meeting because it&apos;s not an Internet-based meeting.
		It&apos;s live in New York!
		After a short discussion, I learned that students that are chosen to speak at this meeting will be taken to New York on the university&apos;s dollar.
		I&apos;m not likely to be chosen, of course, but if I am, that could be kind of fun!
		The meeting will be on Monday, February 06, from 18:00 to 20:00.
	</p>
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